Winning Ruby Heart

by Jennifer Lohmann

  And Josh had always loved her no matter what. He would always love her no matter what. His love didn’t come with a condition of good behavior. Hell, he hadn’t even tried to define good behavior for her since the one disastrous time their parents had assigned him to babysit.

  Then she softened the anger in her voice, because the people standing in front of her were still her parents. They had not always been there for her and had certainly failed her when she’d needed them most, but she couldn’t let their failures define her future any more than she could let her own failures define her.

  “The thing is, since it became clear that I had a gift, my running stopped being about me and started being about everyone else. I made you—” she nodded toward her mother “—the talk of everyone at the spa and you—” she nodded to her father “—the only man at the office with a daughter who was an Olympian.”

  The words sounded more selfish coming out of her mouth now than they had when she was driving over here and saying them to Dotty. People would argue that she had always been selfish, and they would be right. No one made it to the Olympics without sacrificing their friends and family to their dreams, and America’s Darling had sacrificed more than most. But she had done it for the look of pride on her parents’ faces and now she was doing it for herself. Embracing Ruby Heart, warts and all, meant embracing her gifts and her sins and recognizing that the same womb had birthed them both.

  “And now I’m running for me. Because I can and I want to and I’m good at it and I like winning. I hope to win again. I will win again.”

  “The press will say terrible things about you.”

  “They have and, yes, they will. In a couple hours, that site you saw with my picture will be pages deep with comments, most of them wishing me harm.” The knowledge of what people would say made her weak at the knees, but Ruby kept her joints locked. If she sat down, she might fall down. Weakness was not something she’d allow other people to witness, especially not now. Not until she could see Micah.

  “And no matter how many drug tests I submit to and how open I am about my life and my training, some people will assume I’m only a success because I’m doping. And I can’t do anything about them. But I can put one foot in front of the other and I can do it again and again and faster and faster until I cross that finish line. I can do it for me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IF SHE’D EXPECTED her parents to clap after such a rousing speech of independence, she’d been mistaken. Despite repeatedly saying she was running and racing for herself, her mother took a sip of her drink, turned to her husband for reassurance—her father’s slight nod was impossible to miss—then said, “It’s this man, isn’t it? This reporter whose apartment you were coming out of. He’s somehow convinced you to feel sorry for him because of his accident.”

  Ruby might as well not have come over, except now at least she knew she’d said her piece to her parents and would make what she could out of the rest of her life. Hell, at least if she were talking to Dotty, the dog would wag her tail. Still, Ruby tried. “I know you can’t believe it, but if anything, Micah feels sorry for me, not the other way around.”

  “Your face.” It was his father’s turn to show how little he’d listened to her. “Your face is a mess. Something clearly happened and I’ll bet that reporter was involved.”

  Did her father even remember Micah’s name, or was he only the disabled reporter on TV? The weak one he thought he could push around because Micah sat in a chair with wheels.

  “Over the weekend, I went to Missouri and ran a fifty-mile trail race. Someone pushed me and I hit the asphalt pretty hard. I have worse scrapes on my legs and arms. Micah was at the race, but wasn’t involved in the accident.” She couldn’t make the truth any clearer.

  “See, we knew something like this would happen if you got back into sports. Didn’t we, Dennis? We knew people would be jealous of her success and unable to let her participate fairly.”

  Who was she kidding? This conversation was already off track. “First of all, people aren’t jealous of my success—they are pissed off because I didn’t play fairly. I cheated!” A deep breath failed to calm her, though it did lower her voice. “That’s the very point of why I was suspended. Second, being pushed was terrible. It hurt, and I don’t like facing the world knowing that people might be out to get me. It’s scary. But you know what? Living here and being afraid of my own shadow was worse. If something happens to me, it will be because I’m out doing something I love, not hiding in my own room afraid someone will jump out and say boo.”

  She took another deep breath, both to calm herself and to calm Dotty, who had started licking her lips and panting. “Micah helped take care of me, Mom. He put Bactine on my scrapes and made sure I ate something even though I felt too exhausted to chew.” She didn’t mention his creativity in putting her to sleep. “Isn’t that why you decide to be with someone? Besides their sense of humor or their intelligence or their good looks? When you’re too worn down to take care of yourself, that special person will make you a cup of tea.”

  “It’s all well and good for him to get you dinner, but can he provide for you?”

  The scratches Ruby was giving Dotty’s head sped up until she could probably produce fire behind the dog’s ears. But Dotty didn’t seem to mind, and it was better than shaking her hands up and down and yelling, He’s got a job! It’s me who can’t pull my own weight right now.

  Instead, she said, “I’m more worried about my ability to provide for myself, especially if Dad’s firm does pull their support.” Stab and twist. “In any case, Micah has been making a minidocumentary about me and my return to running. Up until last night, that’s all our relationship was about. We have not talked about anything beyond who buys dinner, and I don’t know that either of us is interested in that conversation yet.”

  “Can he provide...I mean, can he father children?” Her mom held her clutched hands together by her chin, almost in prayer.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I haven’t asked him. When I do, I probably won’t tell you about it. But that conversation is even further away than who buys the groceries. Can I just have this, for me? Running and a man in my life who seems to like me for me and not because I was America’s Darling? Please?”

  Both of her parents stood, their faces impassive, her mom’s whiskey glistening over on the small table, her dad’s warming as he clutched his tumbler in his hands. Neither of them had consumed more than a sip of their liquor. “It’s not what we wanted for you,” her mom said finally.

  “I ruined what you wanted for me. And I ruined what I had wanted for myself. But that doesn’t mean I can’t want something new, nor does it mean that the new thing I want can’t also be great. It means it’s different, Mom.”

  “Josh and Christine are coming over for dinner. You could stay,” her mom implored. “Maybe we can keep talking?”

  “You need to think about what I said more than I need to say it again.” And again and again. “I’m taking Dotty to the dog park for the remaining hour or so of daylight and throw the ball around until she’s exhausted.” Or I fall over. “I’ll eat dinner at home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  WHEN MICAH HAD first gotten a call from Dexter to get his ass to the office immediately, he hadn’t thought much of it; Dexter approached everything in the world from needing a cup of coffee to breaking sports news with the same urgency. Until he’d rolled into Dexter’s office to find Dexter, the sports director and another executive producer all seated around Dexter’s small table waiting for him. Micah squared his shoulders and rolled toward the table, the extra bulk of his chair forcing the three bigwigs to scoot closer together. They may have ambushed him, but he knew how to own a space, no matter whose space it was. Micah stuck his elbows out and laid his folded arms on the table, taking up even more space. Sports reporting was a battle of inches
, much like football had been.

  Dexter slid a piece of paper across the table. Micah stared at the expanse of white, then flipped the page over and stared some more. There was Ruby, leaving the parking garage of his apartment building.

  “Where did you get this?” Micah asked.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Dexter asked.

  Micah looked back down at the printout. The scrapes on her face made it look like someone had rolled her along the asphalt, mostly because someone had tried to, not to mention that her face was long and worn. She looked like a survivor.

  “She’s fatigued from running fifty miles and scraped up because someone assaulted her along the trail, which you know because I did a segment on SportsDaily about it. Given all that, I think she looks pretty awesome.” Even through her fatigue she’d cried out with pleasure at the movements of his tongue. Knowing that made her look even better.

  “This is your apartment building?” the sports director and Micah’s immediate boss asked.

  “You know it is.”

  “What do you think this looks like from an outsider’s point of view?”

  Micah took another long look at the photo, this time evaluating the fatigue and exhaustion on Ruby’s face without the knowledge that she’d competed yesterday. If he came across this image on Jezebel’s Twitter feed, he would think the worst of the man whose apartment she was leaving.

  But being pulled into Dexter’s office for this interrogation was ridiculous. “You’re not that stupid. And besides—” he was loath to admit the next part, but better said by him than one of the men at the table “—if people know it’s my apartment, no one is going to believe I’m capable of abusing her. She’s Ruby Heart and I’m in a wheelchair, for God’s sake.”

  Whether or not he would be physically able to abuse a woman wasn’t the issue, but much of the nondisabled world underestimated his ability to do great things, so surely they’d underestimate his ability to do evil, as well. Unless they thought he had minions in his apartment to perform his physical abuse for him.

  “This isn’t about the actuality of the thing but about its perception,” Dexter said. His voice left no room for humor or Micah’s frustrations. “Did you sleep with her?”

  The full weight of what he’d sworn he wouldn’t do crashed down on his shoulders. He’d avoided all physical contact with her because he knew a relationship with her would compromise his objectivity. When he’d seen her limp past the finish line, blood on her face, knees and arms, objectivity had been the least of his worries.

  “It won’t happen again,” he said, knowing that promise wouldn’t be enough, even if he could keep it.

  Dexter’s dreadlocks swung about his face as he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if it won’t happen again. It matters that it happened this once and some parasite caught it on camera. We were asked to comment on whether we know that you were having a sexual affair with America’s ex-darling and, if we did know, how long it had been going on.”

  Dread pooled in the base of Micah’s throat. He’d gotten Ruby Heart into his bed, and it was going to cost him the making of his career. “Pulling the plug on the ultra series would be monumentally stupid. Especially after this photo and the assault piece, everyone who remembers her Olympic performances would tune in to watch the series, hard-core sports fans or not.”

  It was the sports director’s turn in this tag team. “Micah, you mistake what is happening. We’ve already sunk a good deal of money into this series. And you’re right, it’s ratings gold. We’re not pulling the feature. We’re firing you.”

  His teeth ground together, and the only way to release the pressure would be to tip the table over and hope the men sitting across from him went down with it. Instead, he said, “Who are you giving the feature to?”

  “King Ripley.”

  “Fuck no!” He brought his hands down hard on the top of the table and the trio of bosses flinched. “You know he’ll mess this up. Ruby will come out of this with her reputation in worse shape than it already is.”

  “Objectivity, Micah,” his boss said. “You lost it. King hasn’t.”

  “King’s a dick.”

  “Ah, but he’s a dick who knew how to keep his in his pants.”

  “He has no respect for the sport you’re asking him to cover. That’s not the same as objectivity. I get that you’re firing me, but at least give Ruby’s story to someone else. Anyone else.”

  “You know as well as I do that it’s not so much the actuality of objectivity that matters but the appearance of it,” Dexter said. “We can all continue to pretend King’s objective. There’s no idiot on earth who will believe it of you.”

  Micah knew they were right. Just because they weren’t covering wars and natural disasters didn’t mean they didn’t have to keep their noses clean. “I can freelance and write the script.”

  “If you’d wanted to stay involved in this series, you shouldn’t have gotten involved with Ruby Heart. And if you wanted to keep your job, you should have pulled yourself from the story as soon as your objectivity was questionable. This is damage control.”

  He sank back in his chair, all the pressure of what he’d ruined both for himself and for Ruby pushing against his shoulders. “And all that footage I’ve gotten? The interviews we’ve done so far?”

  “The footage is still good. King can redo the interviews after Ruby’s final race. No matter the outcome, her words will have more meaning then. And he’ll have time to prepare.”

  Eternity would not offer King enough time to pull his head out of his ass, even with the help of gallons of mayonnaise. But that wasn’t Micah’s problem any longer. It was NSN’s problem when the series was a disaster. And Ruby’s problem, because it was her life.

  Which made it his problem again.

  Micah backed away from the table and made his way to his office to pack up.

  He’d get Amir to squirrel away the footage. Then he would go home and decide what to do next. Did he call Ruby? Could he call Ruby and keep the blame creating a bitter taste in his throat out of his voice?

  A dangerous question he didn’t know the answer to.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE BOX FULL of stuff from Micah’s office made the roll from the elevator to his apartment awkward. What was he going to do with all this crap? What was he going to do with himself? For as long as he could remember, he’d been pushing for the next and the biggest thing. Starting quarterback. College scholarship. NFL draft. The accident had only pointed the drive in a new direction.

  Now what?

  He was fumbling with the box and the keys to his apartment when the door opened and Ruby stood there. You’re going to have to tell her. Light in the entryway highlighted Ruby against the darkening sky outside, but she didn’t look happy. She looked as sad as he felt. They were both going to feel worse by the time the night was over.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, helping him with his coat, gloves and scarf. “The doorman let me in. I really needed to see you. I’m sure you heard about the paparazzi at your door. My parents found out about our relationship. I talked with them today. About my running. About us.”

  She was talking too much. He wanted to sit on the couch, wrap his arms around her, smell her hair and be in a perfect moment, even if it was short-lived.

  “They wondered if you hit me.” Her voice followed him as he rolled to his recliner. “And they doubted your ability to take care of me. Can you believe them? My father told me his firm was dropping my lawsuits and they had the nerve to doubt how you would pay for a dinner out.”

  Micah didn’t say anything as he swung himself into the recliner, letting go of all his energy and leaving no room for the angry, massive Ruby standing in front of him, hands on her hips and indignation in her eyes.

  “I guess so long as I
’m not doing their bidding, we’ll never understand each other.” God, she was even pacing. She was supposed to still be exhausted, not worked up even further.

  “Maybe I will—”

  “Ruby,” he said.

  “—sell my memoir, like I threatened to do.”

  “Ruby.” He said her name louder this time.

  “Though I’ll need an agent. Can you help me find an agent?”

  Now he had her attention on him because she needed something from him.

  “Ruby, I was fired today.”

  “But what about the series?”

  “That’s it? I was fired and all you can ask about is the series?”

  “I’m sorry you got fired.” Her brows furrowed together and he was too angry to find it cute.

  Instead, her expression infuriated him. “I’ll bet you’re sorry. King has control of the series now. And there goes your redemption story.”

  “You didn’t...”

  “Didn’t what, Ruby? Was I supposed to be looking out for your reputation and that fucking series while I was packing up my office?”

  By her expression, the answer was yes.

  “You know what? I was an elite athlete in college, too. I should have known better than to get mixed up with one. All you can think about is yourself.”

  “I’m...I’m...I’m sorry. I didn’t know. You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell you because the moment I rolled into my apartment, you started talking about your problems.” He wanted to close his eyes and disappear. He wanted to launch himself at her in anger.

  He wanted her gone.

  “Worse than realizing I lost my job is realizing that I lost my job because of a woman who can’t even see far enough past her own nose to ask how I’m doing.”

  “I’m just...”

  “You’re just not used to having to think about anyone else. All this talk of ‘running for yourself’ and ‘living for yourself’ is bullshit. You’ve only ever lived for yourself. And no matter what happens, Ruby Heart is the only person you’ll ever live for.”